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Totally dire journey home - 41 hours - Virgin VS66 MoBay to Gatwick

After a great holiday, we had a dreadful journey home - 41 hours door to door using the scheduled Virgin VS66 flight to Gatwick on Wednesday evening.

We sat on the plane for about 3 hours whilst they worked out if it was working, then took us off the plane and said we would fly 24 hours late. This is all fair enough as I am in favour of not flying in a faulty plane.

However, Virgin then just dumped us in a closed MoBay Airport. It took about 2 hours to get back in through Jamaican customs, another 2 hours to get on a bus to a hotel only 5 minutes away, and another hour to get into a room at the local hotel as Virgin hadn't agreed payment with them ( although why Virgin hadn't been doing this in the previous 7 hours of delay I don't know).

Here are the lowlights.....

...nothing to drink between about 8.30 pm on the plane and breakfast at 9 am the next day
...no-one at all landside of customs from Virgin or the airport to tell us where to go with our bags
...a complete free-for-all at customs and getting on busses - no queueing system enforced
...very very poor behaviour from about 40 young British passengers who ranted, fought, pushed in at all points and acted with complete disregard for others. The police were called, but did very little to control this scary behaviour. One woman who told these guys not to push in was threatened with abuse and violence from a very pumped up huge guy. I don't know what they were all on, but it wasn't Ting.
...no information at all from Virgin until about 12 noon the next day about what was happening
...a three hour check in queue the next afternoon - there were still people in the check-in queue at the front of the airport 45 minutes after the new flight was due to take off. Given that Virgin collected us all from the various hotels and staffed the check in process, this was all entirely in their control.

To be fair, Virgin produced half a dozen security people to fly on the rescheduled plane, and moved seating around to manage the bad ones the next day, but that first evening it was quite scary.

I'll post about the great holiday review later, but am still reeling from the trip home!

After a great holiday, we had a dreadful journey home - 41 hours door to door using the scheduled Virgin VS66 flight to Gatwick on Wednesday evening.

We sat on the plane for about 3 hours whilst they worked out if it was working, then took us off the plane and said we would fly 24 hours late. This is all fair enough as I am in favour of not flying in a faulty plane.

However, Virgin then just dumped us in a closed MoBay Airport. It took about 2 hours to get back in through Jamaican customs, another 2 hours to get on a bus to a hotel only 5 minutes away, and another hour to get into a room at the local hotel as Virgin hadn't agreed payment with them ( although why Virgin hadn't been doing this in the previous 7 hours of delay I don't know).

Here are the lowlights.....

...nothing to drink between about 8.30 pm on the plane and breakfast at 9 am the next day
...no-one at all landside of customs from Virgin or the airport to tell us where to go with our bags
...a complete free-for-all at customs and getting on busses - no queueing system enforced
...very very poor behaviour from about 40 young British passengers who ranted, fought, pushed in at all points and acted with complete disregard for others. The police were called, but did very little to control this scary behaviour. One woman who told these guys not to push in was threatened with abuse and violence from a very pumped up huge guy. I don't know what they were all on, but it wasn't Ting.
...no information at all from Virgin until about 12 noon the next day about what was happening
...a three hour check in queue the next afternoon - there were still people in the check-in queue at the front of the airport 45 minutes after the new flight was due to take off. Given that Virgin collected us all from the various hotels and staffed the check in process, this was all entirely in their control.

To be fair, Virgin produced half a dozen security people to fly on the rescheduled plane, and moved seating around to manage the bad ones the next day, but that first evening it was quite scary.

I'll post about the great holiday review later, but am still reeling from the trip home!

wow, this is very unexpected. The virgin group in the US is very highly regarded (Virgin America). I have flown with them many times and never had a bad experience with them....

You would think it would be even BETTER on their international routes. For shame Mr. Branson =P...
Give this couple a free ride into space on Virgin Galactic!